Episodes began with my mind waking to: “never is dream so luxurious as to counter dread.” I knew then it was to be about dreams deferred and dreams realized. Then I saw a rock in my mind that looked like Abe Vigoda and the rest unfolded from there.
Truffle picked this up by sending one of the best acceptance letters I have ever received, when they likened this story to the work of Michael Cunningham. I had never worked with these editors before, so it seemed uncanny that they could know that Cunningham has long been a favorite American writer of mine. And of course, they couldn’t know.
The story came out in Truffle Issue 02, September 18, 2020. It can be read below or by going to the original publication HERE.
Episodes
by
J. Edward Kruft
Eddie woke to this: never is dream so luxurious as to counter dread. He texted it to himself so as not to forget, and then rolled over and returned to sleep.
If he dreamt, he could not remember.
*
Later, he looked for the stone Monica had given him, the one she picked up as they walked the bay on the Cape.
“Look,” she had said, “it looks like Abe Vigoda.”
He searched one drawer, and then another, and then another. He thought to call her, as though she might know where he’d put it, but it was still too early in L.A. and anyway, maybe the point was not so much to find it anymore, as to recognize he’d misplaced it to begin with.
*
The last time she visited, she let her suitcase drop to the floor and he handed her a scotch and she plopped down on the couch they had once rescued from in front of Balducci’s. With a glance, she took in the entire apartment. “God,” she said, “it feels good to be small again.”
This was why he began calling her – in his head – Santa Monica. The sanctimony in her voice. Did she hear it? Did he, really? – or was it just so much of his own committee chatter that singling out Monica’s annoyances was a way of focusing the meeting?
“How about Sammy’s?” he asked.
“Perfect,” she said, downing her scotch. “Let me freshen up. Hey, do you want to run down first and see if you can get the back corner?”
“Sure,” said Eddie. “Of course.”
*
The stone had symbolic meaning, of course: friendship, shared experiences, giving. She had left him custodian to it all.
But it also had literal properties: weight, smooth and rough edges – the washed and etched contours of memory.
*
They had sat two rows from the stage with all their classmates, watching the dress rehearsal at the high school. As Curly finished Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ to great applause, Eddie whispered in Monica’s ear:
“That’s what I’m gonna be.”
Monica whispered back: “A cowboy?”
“An actor.”
*
The first thing she bought when she had some money was a house in the valley. Eddie imagined dirt roads and hitching posts, but instead he found neat rows of painted houses with desert-proof plants in the front and room for a pool in the back.
“I decided not to buy in the city. This reminds me more of where we grew up,” she said.
“Hell?” he asked.
“Eddie!”
She took him to “the lot” and he roamed the refreshed, third-season sets while she got into makeup and wardrobe. He was given a director’s chair, sans name on the back, and he watched and smiled and applauded appropriately. Later she took him to her favorite L.A. noodle shop, leading him to the little table in the back corner. She asked: “Eddie, how are you?”
“Hanging in,” he said.
“I really wish you’d reconsider coming out here. I could hook you up with so many people in the industry.” Eddie smirked. “What?”
“Nothing. I just don’t think I could work someplace that calls themselves the industry.”
“That’s because you’re a snob.”
“Anyway. New York is home.”
“Only because you’re so Goddamned set in your ways, you don’t allow yourself to let go anymore. Why don’t you let yourself dream?”
*
Eddie realized he hadn’t eaten and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich and sat on the couch. Out the window he saw the Jefferson Library clocktower: Ten-after-ten. Had he really spent a day looking for a rock? Not constantly, he reminded himself. He’d found other things to momentarily steal his attention: he cleaned the silverware drawer; he sharpened his one good knife; he shredded old ConEd and Verizon bills; he called his mother and fought over coming home for Thanksgiving. He cut his toenails. But the stone niggled him and as he sat with the half-eaten sandwich in his lap, he finally asked the question he should have asked all along: Why? Why had it become so important to him, this stupid Abe Vigoda rock, about which he hadn’t cared enough to safeguard?
No, that wasn’t correct. He had cared. He had cared, and he had carried it: back from the Cape, from apartment to apartment, first he and Monica together, and then, as though suddenly, he alone. But it wasn’t sudden. Monica had planned. Monica had saved. Monica had pleaded.
*
Sitting at the back table at Sammy’s, he sang along with the overhead Muzak: She hides like a child but she’s always a woman to me….
“What am I going to do without you?” she asked, taking his hand.
“You’ll be fine.”
“What about you? You going to be okay?”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course.”
“You know, you can change your mind…”
And she’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden….
*
He lay in bed, looking at his phone one last time before turning it off. There was that morning’s text: never is dream so luxurious as to counter dread. He laughed, and then he remembered. It was gone, six months or more now. He had found it on the shelf behind a copy of the works of Oscar Wilde. He had turned it around in his hand, felt its weight, its coldness, its rigidity, and then without any more thought than if it had been a rotting potato, he tossed it into the trash under the sink.
Maybe, he conceded now, he oughtn’t have been so cavalier. He closed his eyes, allowing himself only a dimly lit awareness of a plea for the onset of sleep, and for the dreamwork to start its shift.
BIO (as it appeared in original publiation)
J. Edward Kruft received his MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College. He is a multiple Best Short Fictions nominee, and his stories have appeared in journals such as Barren Magazine and MoonPark Review. He is editor-at-large at trampset. He insists he dreams in color. He lives with his husband, Mike, and their adopted Siberian Husky, Sasha, in Queens, NY and Sullivan County, NY. His writings can be found on his web site: www.jedwardkruft.com and he can be followed on twitter: @jedwardkruft